from the as-the-year-end-draws-near dept

It will come as little surprise that our most insightful comment this week was one of the over 400 comments (so far) hashing out a complex free speech question involving the ACLU. Amidst all the debate about a photographer's right to refuse gay customers, Beech won approval from both sides by simply being pragmatic:

I'm not sure why this is a lawsuit. If someone is really THAT vehemently against photographing your wedding, why would you try to force them to do it? And if the government can compel this lady to take pictures at the wedding, can it compel her to take good ones? What if she, "accidentally" or otherwise, leaves the camera out of focus? Or only takes pictures of everyone's feet? Or only takes pictures of derp faces?

It's not like there's not a huge number of options of photographers. Wouldn't you want to choose someone more progressive anyway?

Google really isn't punishing anyone, they are just improving their product. Their product is to link people with the content they are most interested in. In general, the spam sites are NOT the spots people are most interested in. So the changes to their algorithm moves them downwards in the responses.

It's no more punishment than it is to not return Automobile web pages when the searcher was looking for the history of the NSA.

Now they don't like it, certainly! But it's not being done to punish them, it's being done to make Google a better search engine for the people doing the searches.

Get your lawyers out! If an "artist" can get paid every time... why not you? Every time a house is sold - get your cut.. for the electrician who installed the wiring, the carpenters who built it, the plumbers, the painters...

How about using "Hollywood" accounting/residuals model? Then you could get paid every time the lights turn on...or the lock unlocks...or the water runs...

I bet we can NOT come up with something more insane than the government does...

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Hello From Sarah
I am a Nigerian Princess residing in the Philadelphia region.
I run a website http://aroundmainline.com/
My uncle was unfortunately killed in a car accident and left me a large sum as an inheritance.
I am looking for a restaurant that will allow me and four friends to take a meal and drinks in exchange for
1. A good review
2. 30% of the $15000000 legacy of my uncle

That's all for now! At some point over the next couple weeks, among our various year-end posts, I'll be running down the top comments for 2013, so stay tuned. Though I won't be able to scour a year's worth of posts for editor's choices (especially ones I haven't already used), if there are any comments that people think deserve special mention — maybe something you refer back to often or just that still sticks firmly in your head — feel free to nominate them below. Try to make sure they aren't just good, but they are somehow special (such as comments from non-regulars who stopped by with an insider perspective on a given topic), or really good to a degree their votes may not reflect (such as important comments that came in late after voting died down). I don't have a fixed plan for using these nominations, but I know there are some comments like that out there, and if I see enough that I think are truly worthy of note alongside the winners-by-vote, I'll include a section for them in the post.